Love on the Dancefloor

by Liam Livings

  “Whatever.” I hated him. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow his smug, fat body.

  When I first arrived at The Friary, I had lost myself, completely come untethered from who I was.

  Tom, I am no longer that person. I now know I am an addict. I have had weeks and weeks of group therapy to get to the reasons behind my behaviour. I have an addictive personality, and if I’d not become addicted to drugs, it would’ve been food, sex, shopping – anything really.

  I used the drugs because I’m scared of committing to things: events, careers, people. Drugs meant I was always focusing on them rather than my future.

  It feels good to write that down after saying it so many times. I am what the therapist called a sensation seeker. I find a sensation I enjoy and I want it never to end. If one tab of ecstasy is good, five is amazing. If partying for three hours is good, partying for thirteen is perfect. If ecstasy and cocaine are fun then heroin will be even better. Except when it isn’t. Except when I end up in hospital.

  Although I lost myself, I knew I could find myself again. When I lost myself, I lost you too, and I wanted to try and see if I could get even a small part of you, as a friend, back.

  You’re probably wondering why the big long letter. Well, as I said when I saw you, part of the therapy is to invite someone you care for who’s been affected by your behaviour and to hear them talking about how it made them feel. I know what Mother and Father felt. It’s all I got on the journey home and every time they’ve visited since, reminding me I nearly died and how they’d have died of broken hearts if I’d actually gone and bloody well died. But the only person I could think of who’s put up with my behaviour again and again until enough was enough and they left, is you.

  So what I’m asking, dear Tom, is can you come to my next group therapy session to tell me what it was like, how my behaviour affected you? There will be a counsellor. She’ll ask some questions to me and you. She’s a bit of a hippie hangover, but she knows what she’s talking about. Some of the things she’s said have made my eyes water. It’s not fun. Some of the others have been really hard to watch even from the sidelines, so being the people at the centre of it won’t be a picnic, but it would really help me if you could come.

  I know we’re not together anymore. I know I’ve fucked that up right royally, but I was hoping we could maybe, after all this is behind us, behind me mainly, if we could, if you wanted, we could be friends.

  Paul xxx

  Mum stuffed the letter into the envelope, lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before saying, “So, what do you make of that?”

  “Who’d have thought I’d be back here, single, no job, no boyfriend when six months ago I had everything. I sometimes think it was all a big long dream, you know? Ibiza, the DJing, everything. And I’ve woken up, and all along I was sleeping here, upstairs in my bedroom where I grew up, and Paul was never anything more than my imagination.” I folded the envelope in half and put it in my pocket. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Mum sat next to me at the kitchen table, putting her hand on mine. “Do you love him, love?”

  I nodded. “Stupid, innit? After all this, after me leaving him, I still love him.”

  “No taking account of love. Makes you do stupid things. For instance, I married your dad.” She laughed to herself. “No, seriously, why else would we do most of the things we do for people if it’s not love?”

  “I should move on. Find someone else. Plenty more fish in the sea. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Fuck him. I’m not going through all that shit for him. Bastard, after what he did. After how he treated me. After all the chaos and mess I tried to keep him from, he finally stepped into the abyss and ended up in hospital. Well, it’s not my fault. Not my fucking problem.” I banged my fist on the table.

  We sat in silence for a while as Mum made another pot of tea, clattering and banging on the far side of the kitchen. “That’s that, then.”

  “It is.” I took the mug she’d handed me. “Except…”

  She offered me a cigarette. “Except what, love?”

  “Except I don’t want another fish. I want the fish I had. I don’t want to go fishing again. Christ only knows what I’ll catch.”

  “Have you had a look?”

  “Went to some gay night in Brixton, got chatted up by someone Dad’s age. Met someone who’s opening questions to me were ‘Are you a top or a bottom?’ and ‘Do you like water sports?’”

  “Like swimming and water polo?”

  “No, Mum.” I stared at her.

  Her eyes widened. “Sex, is it?”

  “Yeah, sex.”

  She pulled her chair closer to the table, sipped her tea and asked me to spill everything, about what water sports meant.

  Because I hadn’t the energy to talk about Paul any longer, I indulged her and revelled in the easy, slightly too close for comfort, too cool relationship we had.

  Should I visit Paul at The Friary?

  What do you reckon? ’Course I did.

  Obviously, I spent the next five days umming and aahing about it, rereading Paul’s letter, crying, remembering our time in Ibiza before things had got too bad, crying some more, checking the date, crying again.

  There was a lot of crying involved, until finally, after I’d gone round in circles about whether I should visit Paul or not, my main reasoning being that we’d split up and why should I do him any favours, Mum said, “If you don’t want to go, fucking well don’t go. I’ll call The Friary now for you, put Paul out of his misery. But I don’t think you really don’t want to go. If you’d made your mind right up, we wouldn’t still be talking about this.

  “And love, I mean this with love and affection, but I’ve had this conversation up to here—” she indicated above her head “—going round and round the same bloody argument again and again. I don’t think I can have this conversation another time. Just go. See him. Worst that can happen is it’s fucking hard, but you’re not exactly jumping for joy and going to Disneyland now, are you?”

  Her reasoning and logic were undeniably persuasive. I felt my body go limp. “If you’re saying I should go, I’ll go.”

  “I…” She paused. “Yeah, love, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Now get the fuck out from under my feet, I’m trying to catch up on my soaps while your dad’s out, and I can’t get on with you rabbiting on like some big gobby…rabbit.”

  “I’ll do some CV handing out. Just local, like.”

  “Yeah, you do that, love. Just piss off and leave me in peace. Want me to call, let ’em know you’re coming on the date he asked in his letter? Poor soul, Paul.”

  “Yeah, if you could.” I walked to the door. “Thanks.” I left, without the copies of my CV I’d printed, without any clue of where I was going to walk, but for some reason feeling clearer, more in possession of a direction than I had since leaving Ibiza months ago.

  CHAPTER 19

  I WORE A white sleeveless T-shirt and white combat trousers with clean new white high-top trainers. My bed was covered in piles of discarded clothes I’d tried on before finally settling on the rather angelic ensemble. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to make such an effort when seeing Paul. After all, we were just friends—not even that anymore. Definitely miles away from boyfriends. I wasn’t going to get back with him, not after what he’d done, no way. I told Mum this when I walked into the kitchen in my white outfit.

  “Fancy dress, is it? Where you off to?”

  “The Friary. Seeing Paul. Having the talk. He’s going to hear my side of the story.”

  “Is that today? Come round quick, hasn’t it? Where is this Friary business? Is it on the Tube somewhere?”

  “New Forest, bottom of the M3.” Bottom. My mind flashed to the man in the club in Brixton. I shuddered briefly.

  “Gonna be all right driving afterwards?”

  “Fine.”

  “Only they said, the receptionist lady, she said it can be quite
traumatic. She went on about closure and some other stuff I didn’t quite understand, but I definitely picked up it would be traumatic. And shitloads of hard work. Promise me you won’t drive if you’re too fucked afterwards. If one of us needs to pick you up, we will. Or get a train and we’ll get your car. Whatever, just don’t drive miserable. It’s as bad as driving drunk, I think. This psychotherapist was on about it one morning on the TV.”

  “Gotta go. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck.” She tapped her cheek.

  I kissed her cheek, and she held me in a hug, tighter than usual, longer than usual.

  “Call me before you leave.”

  “How?”

  “The mobile phone. Have you brought it?”

  I ran to my bedroom to collect the new gadget I was still getting used to having in my life. The concept of not having to tell people where I’d be and which number they could reach me on was still new.

  Mum hugged me again. “Go. Be fabulous. Be brave.” She waved.

  ***

  At The Friary, I was led to a large room with chairs around the edge, one wall of windows looking out to the expansive lawn where people walked alone or sat with magazines, smoking in desperation. No sign of any celebrities, though, I noted with disappointment.

  Three chairs stood in the middle of the room, Paul in one and a small woman with short, brown hair, a disconcertingly wide smile and a purple medium-length kaftan worn over flared jeans. Brave choice with those hips.

  She gestured for me to sit opposite Paul and took her place in between our chairs, facing us. After an introduction about the purpose of the first of up to six sessions, as Paul had explained in his letter, she said, “I’m Barbara, a trained psychotherapist, and if at any time you feel unable to continue, you must communicate this to me and we will stop the session.”

  Up to six! Is that what she just said? “Like a safe word?” I quipped, instantly regretting it.

  “What do you mean?” she asked slowly, breathing through her nose after every word.

  “When you do…there’s a safe word, that means stop.”

  A few people in the chairs at the back laughed quietly.

  A part of my soul died. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to be there, not to have said what I’d just said. I opened them, and everything was, sadly, as I’d left it. “Stop, do I just say stop?” I tried, optimistically.

  “Yes, that would suffice. Now, can you please tell Paul how his addiction made you feel?”

  “Lost.”

  “Can you tell us a bit more about that, please?”

  “Like…you wanted to live life as it if was one long party. But it isn’t. It can’t be. You have to get back to reality, don’t you?” I was getting going now, it was flowing out of me. I rubbed my hands together. “You didn’t know when to stop. You just carried on and on and on until I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Feeling words, please, Tom,” Barbara said.

  “I feel that you didn’t listen to me when I said we had to stop. I feel you thought I was spoiling your fun. I feel sad everything we had was built on feelings that aren’t real, feelings that are from chemicals, drugs.” I stopped myself. The reality of what I’d just said hitting me in the face, taking the breath out of my body. What the fuck am I doing here? What’s the point?

  Barbara turned to Paul. “How does that make you feel?”

  Paul avoided eye contact. “Sad. It must have been real, what we had together…wasn’t it? Chemicals can’t have kept us going that long, surely? When I lost you, I didn’t just lose my boyfriend, I lost my best friend. After you left, I had no one to balance me, my addiction, to keep it in check. That’s why I did what I did.” He paused, biting his lip and rubbing one hand with the other.

  “What do you mean, Paul?” Barbara asked.

  “What happened,” he said quietly.

  “Can you talk about that a bit more, Paul?”

  I started to say something, but Barbara silenced me. “It’s time to hear from Paul now, and you’ll get your turn later.”

  Paul said, “I thought I had it all under control. I thought I’d done it all before, nothing could harm me. OK, so I’d had a few close scrapes, but nothing that wasn’t a good story down the pub.” He laughed.

  I didn’t.

  He put his hands in his pockets. “It wasn’t until you’d gone I realised how much you did, how much you balanced me out.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Stopped you having your fun, more like.”

  Barbara said, firmly now, “You’ll have your turn, Tom. Paul. Can you say more about the balancing?”

  “I used to enjoy the sensation of the drugs, the unreality, the dislocation from the everyday, the floaty feeling they gave me. I loved how I felt like I was floating away like a kite from myself, standing on the ground. And every time, you used to bring the kite back, back down to the ground. But when you’d gone, the kite just flew higher and higher until the me that was standing on the ground, he just let it go.” Paul paused. “And then I woke up in hospital.”

  I looked at Barbara. “Me now?”

  She nodded.

  “You can’t live in the sky like the kite. You’ve always gotta come back to earth, get on with life. That’s all I wanted you to understand. Do you get that now?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I don’t like how you’re trying to make me feel guilty for leaving you; like it was my fault you ended up in hospital. I had to leave. I had no choice. I’d tried talking to you, but you didn’t think you had a problem.”

  “I’m an addict, with an addictive personality, I understand that now. But then, you had no chance of me understanding that, not without all this to help me.” He gestured to the room. “You did what you did because it was what you had to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m sorry. Sorry for making it your last resort, the only thing that got through to me. Sorry for being a selfish arsehole. I didn’t want to feel tied down by anything. Turns out that’s not such a great way of living. Anyway, I am not that person anymore.”

  There was a pause as we stared at each other. His twinkly blue eyes still shone brighter than the sun beaming through the window.

  “Can you forgive me?” He held out his hand for me to shake and flashed that familiar smile—the one I’d fallen in love with way back with the record shop in London, in the prehistoric age of our relationship.

  “I forgive you.” I shook his hand. In the face of an apology like that, and the fact that he was in rehab, and the small inkling of feelings that I didn’t deserve someone to love me, I thought it would be unkind to throw it back in his face.

  He pulled me towards him into a hug, and he whispered in my ear, “I love you. I always will, until the day I die.”

  I pulled back from the hug, his words ringing in my ears, deflating all my anger and frustration at him.

  Barbara said, “This was very good work today, both of you. There’s a long way to go on this road, but this is the important first step you’ve taken.” She clapped and was joined by the others in the room. She nodded to me, mouthing thank you.

  I was led out the room by a man in a white tunic and black trousers. At the door, I caught the eyes of a woman in her Sunday-best clothes—black pencil skirt, pink blouse and matching pink chunky necklace—eyes wide and wet, mouth pursed with pink lipstick and hands clasping a pink handbag across her stomach like a protective shield.

  Good luck, I mouthed to the woman.

  She looked past me, pushed her hair behind her ears and strode into the room as one of the men from the outer circle joined her in the middle.

  The white-tunicked man led me to the waiting area in reception and offered me a drink before I left.

  “Is that it?” I asked, assembling myself and my thoughts as I sat.

  “Until next time.”

  “Next time?” My body wilted like an old cut flower.

  “It’s ongoing. Your friend’s lucky. Lots of relatives d
on’t want anything to do with it. Takes months to move through the stages without them.”

  “I think I will have a tea, please. Strong, four sugars.”

  “Sometimes they send the letters back, torn up. Your friend wants to count his lucky stars.” He left.

  This wasn’t part of the plan when I’d agreed to Mum’s suggestion of visiting Paul. This was not meant to happen. I was going to do my bit, play my part in his rehabilitation, help him get back to who he was before he floated into the sky like a lost kite, and then maybe we would be friends.

  And if I only saw him as a friend, if that was the only thing I saw for us in our future, why was I now wanting to run back into that room and ask him if it had all been imagined, if our love was all just down to chemicals, or if what I was feeling for him now was the same as what he felt for me?

  ***

  I walked to my car, crunching the gravel, noticing the birds tweeting, the trees rustling. I leant against the car, dialled Mum’s number. “Mum?”

  “Yes, love, how did it go? You all right to drive?”

  “Can you make yourself stop loving someone, or is love something you can’t control?” And then I cried. Sobbing. Big, sploshy tears rolling down my cheeks. Bolts of pain escaping from my chest which felt as if it was being pressed down with a heavy weight. I gasped for breath as the sadness and loss coursed through me.

  “Stay there. I’m coming to get you, love. I repeat, do not drive. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Do not drive. I’ll be with you as soon as.”

  ***

  We travelled home in silence. I had no words to express how I felt. It was like I’d emptied myself of everything during the therapy session and now it took all the strength I had to stay upright.